Music business news
where to get up-to-date information

Music news and comment

These are the online resources I use for music news (as well as the other sites and links on this page and the indie zine list). Some sites I use regularly—others just to follow up different angles on a particular story. I also get a few newsletters (e.g. FMC). Record Of The Day do good newsletter but you need to register, so I didn’t. I don’t like subscriptions and I don’t like registration (I register very rarely… CMU Digest and Media Guardian are worth it and not too nosey).

Five Eight do a reasonable trial email newsletter, but the regular subscription is over-priced (£295/year with a monthly print mag). You’ll find most of their newsletter stories through Google Alerts, and the over-supply of information on the web is so vast there’s no reason to waste time on any one source.

I don’t use Music Industry News Network (mi2n) or Hits (Hits Daily Double) because they tend to churn press releases and suck up to the majors. Music Week is for subscribers only and their “free newsletter” is simply the web home page (their disappointing public version Dot Music is now run on Yahoo!). The once mighty Record Industry isn’t so good for news these days, although still a good music resource. Billboard and Rolling Stone are linked here because you sometimes get a good article, but the Beeb are OK for daily mainstream headlines, and their separate radio sites (e.g. 6 Music) are better. The best general music news is College Music Update from CMU Music Network online or by email, with a handy weekly pdf digest.

I check The Register every day for news on P2P, download sites, music online, IPR, identity cards, and related UK and EU government stuff.

Blogs like No Rock & Roll Fun and forums (see below) are improving as news and comment resources, and there are media writer sites like I, Cringley and The Lefsetz Letter with interesting articles (Lefsetz archive articles are available without subscription). You soon get a feel for what and who you can trust.

The best customised news resource of the lot is Google Alerts (although Google itself is now a very poor search engine) and once you get your keywords right it’s very good indeed. You can’t do everything with a single conditional alert but a combination of alerts works well. It’s worth pointing out you don’t get the same results as a general Google search. News Alerts use a limited range of sites and Google web search often has news that isn’t in Google News. Google News is a good place to start. This is how I get 90% of my music news right now, and if I had time to surf the results I’d set up more. Beside the information you also get many of press releases the media stories are based on (spot the difference) and you’ll find quite a few decent sites as well.

If you use the Internet for research, try to check what you find against information elsewhere. The signal to noise ratio is very low. Always try to get some facts or numbers to put things in context, and follow claims to the source wherever possible. Chinese whispers can corrupt information that starts out good.

Like all web resources you need to take care with news, and watch out for the wrong ends of sticks, web myths, agendas and regurgitated press releases. If you find any other good sites please let me know.

Music forums

Internet forums are a strange mix. At their best they are good for advice, information, recommendations and debate with like-minded and unlike-minded people. At their worst they are populated by posters with inhuman stamina who type faster than they can think and don’t know the difference between reality and imagination. On any given day the best and worst will be online together, but once you get the hang of forums they are worth the effort if only to lurk.